


Fractured Mirrors

by TheViolentTomboy



Category: Pocket Monsters SPECIAL | Pokemon Adventures
Genre: F/M, Villainspe, a bit angsty
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-03
Updated: 2013-10-10
Packaged: 2017-12-28 07:00:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/989110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheViolentTomboy/pseuds/TheViolentTomboy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yellow somehow winds up in a alternate timeline where she and Red are part of Team Rocket. Needless to say,  the whole thing isn't a pleasant experience.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"Can’t believe that you’re supposed to be me."

The voice drawls, lined with disbelief, amusement, and eagerness. Yellow gulps before steeling herself, looking into the eyes of the one who looks exactly like her and yet could never be mistaken for her. One more time, Yellow tries to wiggle out of the chair she’s tied to. One more time, it’s shown to be a futile effort.

Other-Yellow clearly has no regard for personal space. She’s straddling her lap, face-to-face, nose-to-nose. A gloved hand idly plays with the ponytail, sometimes pulling at it hard enough to bring tears. Other-Yellow has her own hair short and seems to find the long blonde ponytail fascinating.

"Leave her alone," other-Red says tiredly, leaning against the doorframe. His whole posture screams with a defeated sort of weariness; he’s nothing like her own proud, energetic Red, and Yellow can’t help wondering more about what happened to him rather than what happened to  _her_.

Other-Yellow faces him and pouts childishly while squeezing Yellow’s cheeks. Yellow shakes her head free and glares at her. She’s responded to with a laugh.

"But this is so amazing! She’s me but she’s _not_  me!” other-Yellow says with a giggle.

"Well, she’s not a new toy," other-Red replies exasperatedly. He clearly doesn’t expect to win this argument.  

"Well, I’m going to play with her as much as I can before the experiments start," other-Yellow declares.

The word  _experiments_  brings a sense of dread deeper than anything else that Yellow has felt since finding herself in this strange, upside-down world. Yellow’s never been good at hiding her feelings and other-Yellow picks up on it right away and pounces.

"That’s right, your powers are a lot stronger than mine, right?" other-Yellow purrs, running a finger down Yellow’s chest. "The boss man wants to see if they can be put to good use."

Yellow feels her blood freezing in her veins. Other-Yellow readjusts herself that she’s sitting a bit more securely.

"No idea if you’re going to make it out intact, so let’s have as much fun as we can now, okay?"

"No…"

Other-Yellow raises a lazy eyebrow. “Hey hey, no need to be a spoilsport-“

 _ **"NO!"**  _Yellow screams at the top of her lungs. Other-Yellow is so surprised she falls off and onto her rear. Other-Red’s jaw drops and he straightens up ever so slightly.

"I absolutely  _refuse_  to allow Team Rocket in any form, of any world to use the Viridian Forest’s gift for evil purposes,” Yellow all but snarls, her eyes blazing a dangerous gold. Even while she’s tied up, her anger makes her a sight to behold. 

Other-Yellow slowly gets to her feet, the shock sliding off her face to make room for a predatory grin. The fire is still burning strong in Yellow’s eyes. She refuses to back down.

Before Other-Yellow can make another move, a walkie-talkie on other-Red’s belt goes off. ” _All Pokémon on base have broken out and are wreaking havoc. All hands needed to re-contain them. I repeat, all hands needed to re-contain them.”_

Other-Yellow lets out a frustrated groan. “I wonder which one of those three idiots screwed up this time.”

She turns around and heads out the door. “I’ll play with you later,” she calls out.

Other-Red makes a motion to follow her, but he stops to glance back at Yellow. There’s a strange, unreadable expression on his face. Yellow blinks in confusion, inadvertently putting out the fire in the process.

He walks over to her despite the summons. He simply looks at her for awhile, taking in her travel-worn clothing, her long hair, her _face_.

"You’re so different," he murmurs. "Is other me different as well?"

Yellow can see the broken spirit in his eyes so clearly now and her heart pains. Other-her may love her position for whatever strange reason, but why is other-Red here as well?

"You saved my life when I was little," Yellow says quietly. "Then you helped me catch my first Pokémon and told me how as long as I was kind to it, it would always be my friend."

Other-Red’s lips form a strained sort of smile as he clutches at his own heart. And with that he simply makes his way to the door.

"Wait, where are you going?!" Yellow cries out.

"Didn’t you hear? I’ve got orders," other-Red replies without turning around. "Though I can’t help but to wonder if you did something…"

"It’s not too late to do the right thing!" Yellow pleads. "I believe that you’re truly a good person! So please, help me!"

Other-Red shuts the door behind him without another word.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> VS!Red wonders if he can still do the right thing.

Nowadays, no one wants to cross paths with Yellow. Sure, she has always found joy in figuring out new and creative ways to terrify people, but now…well, one would be lucky if the most he got away with is a black eye and a broken tooth.

It’s not hard to figure out the source of her frustrations. Janine was the first to leave, having been romanced to the side of good thanks to, in her words, “some pansy-ass police officer”.

That was a massive shock to everyone, especially Koga, of course, but it was nothing compared to when Silver soon followed. The boss’s own son. Gone. There’s a dart board in Yellow’s room that has a photograph of a certain loudmouth and his stick-in-the-mud girlfriend on it. It’s hard to make out any features between all the darts and throwing knives.

It was only natural that Blue would go with Silver. She might be fond of a precious few people, but, ultimately, Silver and herself are the only ones she truly gives a damn about.

It’s not just that the people she’s known for practically her whole life are leaving. The glory days of the Team Rocket empire are starting to slip away as well. All the political clout they received from defeating the Elite 4 all those years ago is gone now thanks to the passage of time, and the Resistance is fighting harder than ever. Not to mention they lost a lot of resources during that Hoenn mission thanks to that damn Galactic mole. In the battle that ensued between the two teams over Jirachi, all they got out of the wish-granting legendary was for the two battling legendaries to stop and two broken, lifeless dolls. They didn’t even get any glory out of it, thanks to the fact that none of the population of Hoenn saw it seeing how most of them were already dead.

Red’s been wondering for awhile if he should split as well. At least a quarter of the grunts have done so already. With Team Rocket’s resources and manpower at an all time low, it really wouldn’t be all that hard now. But when Yellow comes into his room to blow off some steam, the abuse he suffers at her hands reminds him that he doesn’t deserve freedom, not with all the horrible things he’s done. So he stays and takes it; besides, at least this way Yellow’s less likely to go after others.

When other-Yellow came into the picture, things got, well, strange. During a battle with the Resistance, which was actually going pretty well, she fell out of a hole in the sky. She, along with everyone else present, was very confused, but with one look on the ‘R’s, she immediately started healing up the Resistance’s Pokémon, turning the tide of the battle. The ability was instantly recognized as the Viridian Forest’s gift, but it was plain to see how much more powerful she is than their own Yellow; she can heal more Pokémon, and better too.

Team Rocket ended up losing that battle, but they managed to get away with a nice consolation prize; other-Yellow may be more powerful, but she still overtaxed herself and knocked herself out healing too many Pokémon. Nabbing her and figuring out how to harness her powers might be the one thing that might tilt the scales back to their favor, and of course they certainly don’t want someone like her with the Resistance.

Yellow’s overjoyed; Red suspects it’s just about having a new distraction to take her mind off all her problems. She finds it fascinating just how different the two of them are despite basically being the same person and has lots of fun playing mind games on, well, herself. Red finds the whole thing unnerving. This Yellow has a strong sense of justice and balks at the idea of anyone getting hurt. Not to mention the way she  _looks_  at him.

Sure, she was just plain terrified meeting her alternate self and seeing how different they are, but with him…so many emotions flashed through her face the first time she laid eyes on him: joy, admiration, and something _else_ , quickly to be replaced with confusion, disbelief, horror, and so many other things he couldn’t immediately label. Red wonders what kind of person his own alternate self is to warrant such a reaction.

Red concludes that his alternate self must be an extremely awesome hero and that other-Yellow finds this new version…well…

After helping out getting all the escaped Pokémon back to their cages, it being late now, Red goes to his quarters and lies on his cot, staring at the ceiling. He thinks about other-Yellow telling him a bit about the past she shares with other-Red.

Other-Red must have never lost that stupid bet. Other-Red must have made it to the League and battled other-Green in the finals. Other-Red must be greatly admired and respected by all as a shining beacon of justice.

And Red clutches his chest when he thinks about his dreams long-gone and the life he could have had. He wants it, he wants it so bad, but it’s too late now.

Or is it?

This is probably going to bite him in the ass later, but Red sneaks out of his room. He manages to grab other-Yellow’s belt of Pokéballs from one of the labs and makes his way to her cell.

When he swipes his all-access key card to open the door, the sound wakes other-Yellow up from her sleep. She blinks tiredly at him, but the _look_  and the  _smile_  she gives him momentarily stops his heart and gets something fluttering like crazy in his stomach. Her sleep-induced mind might have mistaken him for her own Red, but Red finds that he doesn’t mind.

At all.

He’s not sure if this is a good thing or not.

"Red?" she murmurs as he works on untying her.

"Shh," he whispers back as he helps her to her feet and hands her her belt.

Her eyes are shining. He’s never seen an expression like that on Yellow’s face. He forces the thought out of his mind before he can dwell on it too much; they still have to actually get out of this facility now. It won’t be long until someone realizes what he’s doing.

Sure enough, that’s when the alarms go off.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> VS!Red thinks that he might be falling in love with canon!Yellow.

It’s actually easy to differentiate the two different Yellows in his mind. Besides superficial appearances, their only similarity is how honestly every emotion and feeling shows on their faces. It’s the emotions and feelings themselves that are as opposite as night and day.

The first time other-Yellow smiles at him, truly smiles  _for_  him, it’s right after they managed to shake off the Rocket grunts who were pursuing them. The smile she gives him was so full of earnest gratitude and the way it warmed him all the way to the heart was only made uncomfortable by it’s unfamiliarity.

Sometimes Red thinks of the way she smiled the two brief times she mistook him for her own Red, and wishes she could smile that way at him for real.

It’s pretty obvious to see that other-Yellow is head over heels in love with her own Red.

During their first night out, Red managed to convince her to tell him more about the other him. It’s an awkward request, sure, so she adverted her eyes while she talked. But there’s no way to hide the way they absolutely  _sparkled_  when she talked about him. 

Besides saving her life, she talked about how other-Red stopped Team Rocket and went on to win the Pokémon League. She talked about how he inspired the people of Viridian to take it upon themselves to try to pacify the enraged Pokémon that Team Rocket had experimented on. She talked about how companionship between humans and Pokémon has never been stronger thanks to his shining example.

And, with the slightest of blushes but the steadiest of voices, she talked about how he would always do his best to do the right thing and keep his promises.

Red always mulls over her passionate words before going to sleep. That could have been his life. It  _should_  have been. And whenever he looks at Yellow, his heart aches for what could have been all the more.

So on the third night since they’ve been on the run together, he kisses her.

It’s a moment of impulsive rashness. They’re huddling close towards the fire they’ve built and waiting for the Tinymushrooms they’ve collected to cook and she’s right there and-

He gently grasps her by the chin. She freezes the moment his lips touch hers and something in Red’s brain blissfully, blessedly, shuts down. For the first time in his life since that damned fateful day, he’s not lost in his pain and regrets. He just concentrates on the young woman in front of him and how so very pleasant it is to _feel_  her.

But perhaps he’s moving too fast. When his hand moves from her chin to the back of her head and the other reaches for her cheek, she pushes him away. Their gazes meet, and Red’s heart plummets at the sight of the utter confusion on her face and the faintest traces of fear in her eyes.

"Wha-why…" she starts to say before shooting up to her feet and shouting,  _"I have to go to the bathroom!"_

And she promptly disappears into the trees.

Red reaches for her before letting his arm drop. He stares at the flickering flames, noting how the mushrooms are starting to burn but not moving to do anything about it.

He just laughs bitterly to himself.


End file.
